Ball Scene NYC

For this post I wanted to talk about the little known underground culture of the gay ball scene in NYC.

I first came to know about the ball scene in 2003 through a transgendered friend of mine I had met at school. She told me all about the Ball's that were being thrown. The "houses" or families in the scene and all the different categories one could walk. 

If you don't know anything about ball culture, it is an underground LGBT subculture where people "walk" or compete for trophies and prizes at a Ball. The Balls are usually thrown by a "house" the Village Voice explains houses as...

...houses are loose-knit, typically same sex, confederacies of "children" who adopt a family name, usually swiped from a fashion designer, and adhere to rules set up by a presiding "mother" and "father."

...a big raucous band of "children" (the house members): drag queens, butch queens, transsexuals - mostly MTF but some FTM, a few non-trans girls and one or two straight guys. The smattering of girls and straight guys notwithstanding, the houses are, essentially, cabals of young black and Hispanic men obsessed with being fashionable and fabulous.

The members of different houses compete in different categories to win themselves and their house a trophy and usually prize money which usually goes to the house mother and/or father. Everyone wants to be in a winning house, the fabbest house and there are even awards given to the "house of the year" at the annual awards ball.

Some of the categories you can compete in at a ball are...

• Butch Queen Vogue Femme/Female Figure Performance — Give a stunning performance using the five elements of vogue: hands, catwalk, duckwalk, floor performance, and spins and dips
• BQ Realness — Judged on participants' ability to blend in with heterosexuals by giving Thug, Pretty Boy, School Boy, or Executive
• FQ Realness — Judged on participants' ability to blend in with female heterosexuals
• Realness With a Twist (Twister) — Judged on participants' ability to blend in with heterosexuals, then come back and vogue fem
• BQ/FQ/FF Runway — Judged on participants' ability to catwalk, usually with a requested outfit or color
• Bizarre — Judged on participants' creativity to design a costume based on what the category asks for
• Labels — Judged on how many of the year labels a participant is wearing and their authenticity
• BQ/FQ/FF Face — Showing off your clean, perfect, smooth face
• BQ/FQ/FF Sex Siren — Giving sex appeal mostly in sexy underwear such as thongs, briefs, or bikinis
• European Runway — Often a Butch Queen Category, European runway is brought in over the top effects that are more likely to be seen in a high-cost European fashion show; the person walking walks like a female or feminine model, not like the male models of America.
• American Runway — Much like European Runway, American Runway is usually a Butch Queen Category but is often walked by TransMen and Butches/Studs, but the models walk as a masculine models from America, not feminine models like in European Runway.
• Butch Queen up in Pumps — Basically the same as Labels or Runway but you must wear heels usually six inches or more
• FQ/BQ in Drag Female Figure Performance — Give a performance (usually lip-synched) of a famous female figure
• Hands Performance — Give a voguing performance using hands only
• Virgin Vogue Femme — The same as vogue femme but for participants who have been voguing for less than one year, as per Legendary Icon Selvin Khan
• Virgin Runway — The same as Runway but for participants who have been walking Runway for less than one year, as per Legendary Icon Selvin Khan
• Best Dressed — self explanatory

Annnnnyway, we did a screening at my house of the documentary Paris Is Burning.

Paris is Burning was made in 1990 by documentary film maker Jennie Livingston and it chronicles the ball scene in the late 80's in New York If you havn't seen this movie you should watch it to really understand how the scene evolved and how it works.

Here is the trailer for Paris is Burning

The scene evolved and changed a lot from what it used to be in the 80's through the nineties and in 2006 Wolfgang Busch (another documentary maker) released a seqal to Paris is Burning compromised of 10 years of footage and interviews with ball scene personalities.

Here is the trailer for How Do I Look

So I started learning about all the different categories one could walk at a ball. I started listening to the beatz of the ballroom and I started to get to know all the major ballroom personalities. I had basically fallen in love with Ball culture. I started going to the balls and seeing the vogueing and runway in person. I then started to learn how to vogue, walk runway and even started making my own beatz sampling other famous ball beatz. All vogueing beatz sample Masters At Work's Ha Dance and the crash in the song has become synonomous with vogue dips.

That'll be all for this post. In my next post I'll share more about the scene and my experiences with it.